Indya Moore Doesn’t Want to Play Victim Anymore

The actress, who plays Angel on FX ballroom drama Pose, recently sat down for an interview with Teen Vogue where she talked about going to the Golden Globes, the projects she’s working on, the roles she’d love to play, and where she’d like to see the film industry go next.

Early on in the interview, Teen Vogue’s Gabe Bergado asked Moore what she hopes to see Hollywood do more of in the future.

“I definitely would like to see more of my talent being utilized outside of it being about my gender and the pain that comes with being ostracized by society,” Moore said. “I think that's the only use that people see trans people for right now. The only time people are finding a use for our performance or our ability to act is to demonstrate pain, the pain of [being ostracized], the pain of our gender being dissected.”

“We just get to see cis people reflect and utilize their ability to perform in ways that get to represent doctors. They get to represent different occupations, cashiers, just different heroes. We get to imagine cis people outside of even everyday functions, but trans people only seem to be seen through our gender and what people dislike or like or fetishize about that. I'm waiting for us to move past that point.”

She has a point! TV shows with trans characters are rare, period, and it’s even rarer to find a trans character whose plotlines don’t all revolve around their transness. There was Doubt, the short-lived CBS legal drama where Laverne Cox played a lawyer opposite Katherine Heigl. (Fun fact: Nevada author Imogen Binnie was one of the writers on the show.) But they’re few and far between.

“[T]rans people are constantly, constantly victimized in our narratives all the time, but we never get to see ourselves as heroes,” Moore continued. “We never get to see ourselves as protectors. We never get to see ourselves as fighting back.”